A simple, fresh, impromptu potato salad is a wonderful way to add a little extra greenery to a meal, and if you treat the salad right, it doesn't need to be heavy or mayonnaise-laden at all. Take this one, for instance -- not a smear of mayonnaise in sight. This salad has green onions for savory, and red radish slices for crunch and color. I also call for a couple specialty ingredients: smoked olive oil and citrus ponzu. The ponzu gives just a hint of zesty citrus flavor, and it cuts through the heaviness...

Delicious food and wine pairings almost always factor such individual elements as fat, salt, acidity, sweetness, tannins and alcohol in either the wine and food, then knowing how well (or poorly) these elements play together. In this recipe, you'd think it important to pay attention to the enormous amount of fat, but you needn't. Poaching in olive oil is just like roasting in salt crust: Neither oil nor salt is a final factor in the taste; they're mere mediums for heat. What will matter here is...

A simple, fresh, impromptu potato salad is a wonderful way to add a little extra greenery to a meal, and if you treat the salad right, it doesn't need to be heavy or mayonnaise-laden at all. Take this one, for instance -- not a smear of mayonnaise in sight. This salad has green onions for savory, and red radish slices for crunch and color. I also call for a couple specialty ingredients: smoked olive oil and citrus ponzu. The ponzu gives just a hint of zesty citrus flavor, and it cuts through...

Never enough bacon in your life? Perhaps a jar of Fennel and Pepper Bacon Spread will fill the bill. It's the newest jam from Seattle's Skillet, the folks who cooked up the Original Skillet Bacon Spread several years ago. These aren't your granny's berry jams. Both work best with savory foods such as burgers, grilled sandwiches or cheese. We favored newcomer Fennel, a bright, tangy jam thanks to the apple-cider vinegar, onion and garlic in its mix. The Original, with balsamic vinegar among its ingredients, is a bit...

"Smile Orange," now at Victory Gardens Studio Theater, plays a little as though the denizens of "The Hot L Baltimore" up and high-tailed it to Jamaica. These characters aren`t as plentiful or as interesting as those in Lanford Wilson's classic, but Trevor Rhone's quicksilver study of a handful of workers in a declining Jamaican resort is mildly funny, amiable, and gently true, while the performances-like an island holiday-are zesty, engaging and fresh. The plot is not much more than a...

Splashy restaurant debuts attract a lot of attention, no surprise there. But today we take a look at two quiet newcomers, low-key neighborhood Italians with impeccable culinary credentials: J. Rocco, which opened in mid-May in River North, and Tre Soldi, which arrived mid-June in Streeterville. J. Rocco Chef/partner Steven Chiappetti worked under Paul Bartolotta at Spiaggia and the late Fernand Guittierrez at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago, and in 1997 he represented the U.S. in the Bocuse d'Or...

Some formidable acting power is stuffed into the Pine Box Theater production of "A Girl With Sun in Her Eyes," a deceptively titled little drama by Joshua Rollins that's actually a gritty police procedural involving Chicago cops (good and bad), a prostitute and a regular kind of guy whose bachelor-party foray to a strip club south of the Loop lands him in an interrogation room and gets him in all kinds of dangerous trouble. The 30-something guy in question ...

Wine with hot dogs? C'mon. The default adult beverage with the pups may be beer, but consider that a slew of wines are very beerlike indeed. They're the sparklers, the bubblies, the "Champagnes" of bottled beverages, from many lands and in a wide range of flavors and colors. Three suggest themselves here, a white, a rosé and a red, from a trio of regions much better known for their wines than their wieners. But the aim is the same: When man bites dog, the drink merely needs to be cold, crisp, clean and...

Monday's "Three's Company" movie opens with the modern-day Joyce DeWitt talking about the archetypal jiggle sitcom she co-starred in, and you start to worry. But then the telling of the show's backstage story starts, with actors playing the actors, and it settles into a mostly fat 1970s groove. "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of `Three's Company'" (8 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5) plays it as a zesty period romp, a tale of stardom, ambition, greed and stupidity. That's not to...

Think creamy, zesty macaroni and cheese wrapped it in a flaky, crisp crust. Deliver it hot in a fragrant package and you have the ultracomforting cheese burek from Beograd Meat Market. Eat it at the cafe or get one to go from the hot case for $6. Beograd Meat Market, 2937 W. Irving Park Rd.; 773-478-7575.

My ideas for this column come about as a function of a winemaker interview, a holiday or season, a suggestion from a student or a reader or, often enough, a whim. Writing them up, I'll of course recommend wines that I've researched and tasted. But my tasting notes also sport a fair number of orphans or strays, terrific wines that don't fit under any one rubric or motif. It would be a shame that they went wanting for recommendation due to that, so here are a passel of delicious wines...

Extreme Waiting for the Punchline (A&M) (STAR)(STAR)(STAR) Driven by the technically proficient picking of guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, Extreme ventured into the risky realms of progressive hard rock with their previous disc, "III Sides To Every Story." On the surface, "Punchline" is a modest leap backward. Featuring the snotty bellowing and smooth-edged balladry of vocalist Gary Cherone, radio-friendly tunes such as "Hip Today," "There Is No God" and "Unconditionally" fail...

Gingerbread, in its simplest terms, is a cake flavored with ginger and often molasses. In the Middle Ages, the cake was ornately decorated and even embellished with gold leaf. Today, we think of gingerbread as either a simple thick, dense cake or a cookie shaped like a man. It's often a challenge to find a modern version of classic recipes. So it is with gingerbread -- I have always found them too heavy. But I love this Bundt cake from "Cake Simple" (Chronicle Books, $19.95), by...

Kit Reed's deliciously satirical "Thinner Than Thou" is a mordant vision of a brave new world where religion is rooted in the worship of one's body as a sacred temple utterly free from the fleshy sins of flab. Reed has cooked up a zesty send-up of our contemporary obsession with attaining eternally svelte self-images as we merrily Botox, lipo-suck and nip-and-tuck our way toward bodily bliss. Mixing social and cultural satire, the author's sardonic parable is set in a repressive,...

A simple, fresh, impromptu potato salad is a wonderful way to add a little extra greenery to a meal, and if you treat the salad right, it doesn't need to be heavy or mayonnaise-laden at all. Take this one, for instance -- not a smear of mayonnaise in sight. This salad has green onions for savory, and red radish slices for crunch and color. I also call for a couple specialty ingredients: smoked olive oil and citrus ponzu. The ponzu gives just a hint of zesty citrus flavor, and it cuts through...

"Sawdust and Spangles": Inspired by the memoirs of 19th Century circus pioneer W.C. Coup, Prop Thtr and Powertap Productions' spirited homage to a roguish showman, by C. Riley Mills and Ralph Covert (who wrote the score), is especially strong at suggesting the "sawdust." It captures a rough and tumble, down and dirty entertainment that proved a freak show on more than the midway. Add to this the high-falutin' bombast of sucker-seeker P.T. Barnum, Coup's partner and nemesis,...

A simple, fresh, impromptu potato salad is a wonderful way to add a little extra greenery to a meal, and if you treat the salad right, it doesn't need to be heavy or mayonnaise-laden at all. Take this one, for instance -- not a smear of mayonnaise in sight. This salad has green onions for savory, and red radish slices for crunch and color. I also call for a couple specialty ingredients: smoked olive oil and citrus ponzu. The ponzu gives just a hint of zesty citrus flavor, and it cuts through the heaviness...

Adrian Belew Here (Caroline) (STAR)(STAR) 1/2 A buzzing, otherworldly presence on other people's albums, guitar whiz and multi-instrumentalist Belew strives for more user-friendly pop on his solo outings. He does have a way with sharply defined textures, ear-grabbing hooks and a lively sound for a one-man band. Yet dig beneath the surface, and you find an awful lot of mush, especially when Belew gets atop that soapbox reserved for musicians who act like they're...

Sauvignon blanc does one thing overwhelmingly well: It stands out in a crowd. Even the least initiated of wine tasters could not mistake a sauvignon blanc out of the bottle. It does that pretty much wherever it grows as a vine. Its classic rendition arrives from cool climates such as the Loire Valley in France, coastal South Africa or either island of New Zealand. From these places, it is possessed of a notably acidic edge and the memorably piercing aroma of one or more of these: grapefruit rind, lime zest,...